


The Wounds You Can't See (Are the Ones that Fester)

by Telaryn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Awesome Laura, Awkward Conversations, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Fear, Inspired by a Movie, Laura Feels, Loss of Innocence, Loss of Trust, Mind Games, Post-Movie(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sacrifice, Secrets, Self-Sacrifice, Suicidal Thoughts, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 20:51:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3951292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint tries to return home after Loki and the Battle of New York, only to find that Loki has beaten him there and the patience and trust he needs from his wife might not be there for the taking anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wounds You Can't See (Are the Ones that Fester)

**Author's Note:**

> In the wake of Age of Ultron, a lot of us who ended up fans of the Family Barton were discussing how their introduction affects all the things that we weren't privy to with regards to Hawkeye in the three years separating Avengers 1 and 2. Somebody brought up how different his post-Loki recovery would have been with a wife and children in the mix.
> 
> And I was off to the races.

_”We’ll be in around midnight.”_

It’s the call Laura has waited for nearly two months to get, and now that she has it and the promise of him it brings her no peace. Too much has happened, too much has been said – the children have seen their father fighting aliens on national television, for God’s sake!

Almost as if he were reading her mind, and for all she knows at this point he is, Clint finishes the call by asking that she not tell the children. “I know they’ve got school tomorrow. I’ll see them when they get home.”

“Clint…” It’s a red flag, a warning siren, but she swore she would never attack him like this on the phone when he couldn’t defend himself.

“It’s going to be okay, Laura.”

It’s not, though. Nothing is okay and all the words she needs to tell him cut her throat to ribbons as she swallows them back. _”He does not belong to you anymore. I have called forth his truest self, the killer that lives in his soul. The next time he crosses your threshold, you will watch as he slits your children’s throats.”_

“Be safe.” It’s all she can manage in the end without screaming. If he knows about her alien visitor and the poison he dripped in her ears, he gives no sign. He makes no attempt to extract an ‘I love you’ from her either, which is terrifying all on its own.

_”It’s going to be okay, Laura.”_

Deep down she knows she’s overreacting, but the hours between the kids returning home and bedtime are a seemingly endless stretch of challenges to her sanity. Lila brings home extra homework and a note from her history teacher; she’s started acting out in school because she misses Clint. Laura tries to reason with her, but the weight of everything bearing down on her makes it hard to think past the fact that she wants Daddy home too.

Cooper is old enough to understand and accept his father’s absences as necessary, but he’s also developed an almost psychotic urge to wind his sister up for no good reason at all. Laura starts the two of them off at the kitchen table to do their homework, but quickly has to move Lila into the front room when the girl ends up a screaming ball of outrage and the only evidence of her brother’s guilt is a pale hint of a smile that may or may not be hovering around his thin lips.

 _I can’t do this._ Somehow she manages to make it through dinner and sending the children upstairs for their baths, but a moment alone in her kitchen is all it takes for memory of Loki’s visit to crowd out all other concerns. _”You will watch as he slits your children’s throats.”_ Laura doesn’t want to believe it, but for Cooper and Lila’s sake she can’t entirely ignore it either.

Bedtime is as much of a battle as the rest of the day, and Laura doesn’t feel even a slight twinge of guilt when she reaches for one of Clint’s micro-brews in the back of the refrigerator. The kitchen clock is softly chiming eleven when she steps out onto the front porch, twists the cap off the bottle, and draws what feels like her first real breath in hours.

The night is soft and peaceful as it wraps around her. She has sat here more nights than she can count, alone and with Clint’s arms around her. Some nights they would talk, others they would just sit enjoying the peace and quiet and the comfort of each other. She misses that most of all – craves it with every fiber of her being. She needs his touch, his quiet strength to keep her steady, not this crawling doubt and bone-deep fear that everything she knows is about to come unraveled for good.

This far out she can’t hear the kitchen clock anymore, but just as she finishes the last swallow of her beer the soft whine of a quinjet engine splits the peace of the night. Setting the bottle on the porch rail, she comes slowly down the steps to stand in the yard – hugging her arms across her chest.

The large, dark shape moves into position over a nearby stand of trees, then slowly sinks out of view. Laura remembers the week Clint spent clearing out the underbrush and trees, making a concealed space for any visiting SHIELD jets to settle. Minutes seem to stretch into an eternity before two familiar shadows emerge from concealment.

Laura doesn’t intend to make a sound, let alone the tiny whimper that escapes her on seeing Clint for the first time in months, but if either Clint or Natasha hears her slip they give no sign of it. Tears fill her eyes as his handsome features come into view at last. “Hey honey,” he says softly as their eyes meet. “One piece, just like I promised.”

“We saw you jump off that skyscraper,” she manages. “Lila wants you to teach her how you did it.”

A smile softens the lines of his face. “Not a lot of skyscrapers around here.” His hand brushes her arm, but he makes no other move to touch her and Laura can’t relax enough to make the first move. _”He does not belong to you anymore.”_

Her greeting for Nat manages to be more genuine. Something horrible has happened – she’s even more certain of it now that he’s here standing in arm’s reach – and instinct says that Natasha Romanoff is the reason he’s standing here at all. “We need to talk,” Nat says when Laura finishes, her green eyes full of all the emotion Laura had expected to see in her husband. “Things happened that couldn’t be talked about over a phone.”

It’s confirmation of her worst fears, but not enough to stop her heart the way turning and seeing Clint disappear into the house - _their_ home – does. Grasping for the tatters of her self-control, Laura tries to project an aura of calm as she follows him inside with Natasha on her heels.

“Dammit Cooper,” Her voice stays low; the last thing she needs right now is either of the kids getting in the middle of whatever their father has brought home with him, but her exasperation is plain. Clint is standing at the foot of the couch, arms hugging his chest in an almost mirror pose of hers as he watches his son struggle to stay awake. “I’m sorry,” she continues as Clint turns and she sees the tangle of emotions in his expression. “He must have figured out something was up.”

“It’s okay. I’ll take him up,” Clint says, and oh God she can suddenly hear everything Natasha was hinting at in his voice. Quiet, careful, like it belongs in someone else’s throat. Laura swallows, nods too quickly as she struggles to hold back the tears now threatening to drown her from the inside out.

“C’mon, buddy.” His voice is still too soft, too flat, but he turns and crouches – inviting Cooper to clamber up on his back. “Pretty sure you’ve got school in the morning.”

 _School…_ she’s going to have a monster fight on her hands when Lila finds out in the morning that her father’s home and Cooper got to see him. “Tell Auntie Nat good night,” she reminds the boy as he settles into position.

“Good night, Aunt Natasha,” Cooper dutifully repeats. Nat slips by Laura, gives the boy’s tousled hair a quick caress before kissing him on the cheek.

“Good night, serzhant,” she murmurs, her accent suddenly thick and warm in the heavy air. “Keep good watch for me.” Her hand falls briefly to rest on Clint’s arm, and she says something in Russian too fast for Laura to follow, although she does catch ‘I won’t be far’ before it’s over and her boys are retreating upstairs.

 _They’re managing me._ The realization hits her like a punch to the stomach as the sound of Clint’s boots on the stairs finally fades to silence. “Natasha,” she begins, shifting her focus back to the woman sharing her space, the woman holding answers about her husband Laura is beginning to wonder if she will be allowed to hear.

_”He does not belong to you anymore.”_

“Not here,” Natasha says, before Laura can get her first question out. “Can we go out onto the porch?” Her green eyes are earnest, practically begging for understanding. She starts to reach out, then clearly thinks better of it – but not before Laura realizes that the hand she clenches into a fist and forces back to her side is trembling. “All right,” she sighs, heading for the front door.  
**********************  
The boy goes down easily, only asking if Clint is all right as he delivers a goodnight kiss to the unlined forehead. “Fine Coop,” he promises, brushing his son’s short wisps of hair back off his face. “I’ll be better after you’re home from school tomorrow.”

He chooses to see it as prayer, not fib, designed to spare his son’s innocent belief in a father people used to call a hero.

 _”You can do this. Trust yourself. Trust them. I won’t be far.”_ Natasha’s words drift back through his mind as he leaves Cooper’s room, pulling the door almost to the jamb. Her belief in him has kept the darkness at bay, kept him from doing something irreversible in the days after New York, but he can’t keep her at his side forever.

Awareness that he’s been standing too long in the hallway shivers through him, bringing him back to the present. Laura won’t be happy that he asked Nat to speak with her first, but too much of the past few months is little more than a blur of nightmare images for him. He still isn’t sure where he stops and Loki begins, and intellectually at least he recognizes that’s more horror than his wife needs to be burdened with.

Instinct draws him towards the spare room at the opposite end of the hall from the one he shares with Laura. _Don’t do it,_ his conscience warns. He trusts Nat with his wife, trusts that she will find the words to let Laura know exactly what she’s going to be up against, but he’s always been too nosy for his own good.

A flick of the latch, a slow slide up of the casement, and suddenly he can hear voices on the night air. _“How many?”_

Clint’s heart skips a beat as he hears his wife ask the first thing he’d wanted to know on waking to find himself alone in his head. _”The number doesn’t matter,”_ Nat replies – apparently determined to carry this secret to her grave. _”The fact that there was even one is a cancer he may likely never recover from.”_

 _“Has he…”_ Laura pauses, and Clint can hear her swallow. _“Has he talked to anyone?”_

Closing his eyes, Clint rests his head against the night-cooled glass. _You could call it talking,_ he thinks, recalling his mandatory psych eval. Eight hours in a room with the only shrink he would agree to talk to, before Fury would clear him to leave the base. He’d said the right words, shed the right amount of tears, and her signature had gone on the form.

He hadn’t been fooling anybody who mattered. _”He did.”_ He can hear the edge in his partner’s voice, Natasha’s words echoing the line of his own thoughts. _”SHIELD wouldn’t have released him to come home otherwise. Laura…”_ Now it’s Clint’s turn to swallow as he waits for the words he still doesn’t have the courage to say for himself.

 _”He doesn’t trust himself right now. With you and the kids. He wants to be here – it’s the best place for him, but Loki…”_ Her voice trails off, and Clint silently wills her to finish. _Don’t make me be the one to say it to her, Nat. Please._

 _”I was ready to put him down.”_ Clint’s hands clench into fists against his thighs and he hates himself afresh as he hears the grief in her voice. _”To keep you and the children safe I was ready to put a bullet in his head, Laura. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”_

Tears slip down Clint’s cheeks as he waits to hear his Laura’s answer. _“That’s why you told him you wouldn’t be far,”_ she says at last. The fact that she’d caught enough of Nat’s reassurances to understand surprises a smile out of him, even as he mourns everything he’s done to bring them to this point.

 _”Are you staying here?”_ She doesn’t want the answer to be yes – he can hear it in her tone – but he isn’t that much of a coward. _Not yet._  
*******************************  
Breathing is suddenly easier as Laura listens to Natasha explain that she will be taking a hotel room in town. “I told him I would stay a week, be a safety net for you, Cooper and Lila while he finds his footing.” A card is extended towards her – Laura doesn’t realize her fingertips have gone numb until she takes it. “I can’t tell you what to do,” Natasha continues, “and I’m so sorry that I couldn’t stop it from happening, but please do not take any chances because you feel like you need to be strong for him.”

Adrenaline floods her system, and for a moment all Laura wants to do is gather up her children and disappear into the darkness. Anger, frustration, questions she already knows the answers to – they all swirl into a murky red and black mess in her mind as she rages against the unfairness of it all. “I will be strong for my children,” she says at last, meeting Natasha’s gaze without flinching.

Whatever the Black Widow sees in her in that moment, it’s apparently enough. “We’re both counting on that.”

Natasha leaves shortly afterwards, and in all the years she’s been aware of her husband’s crazy professional life, Laura has never been more relieved to see her go. She needs to breathe, needs to think about what the two of them have dropped in her lap and what she’s supposed to do about it. Not what Clint and Natasha expect her to do, but what she needs to do for herself and for the children.

 _”You ground him. Keep him from giving into his baser instincts. Some might think it romantic.”_ Laura hugs her arms across her chest, shivering at the memory. She’d prayed so hard for it to be a lie, and days later as they watched Clint on the news reports fighting with the other Avengers to save New York from annihilation she’d actually allowed herself to hope that things weren’t as horrible as her alien visitor had wanted her to believe.

“You coming in?”

 _” The next time he crosses your threshold, you will watch as he slits your children’s throats.”_ Tears spill down her cheeks as she looks up and sees Clint standing in the doorway. “Tell me what I’m supposed to do, Clint.” She feels her heart shatter in her chest as everything finally comes crashing in on her. “He said you would kill Cooper and Lila, you would kill me. I didn’t want to believe it, but then you leave Natasha here to tell me that maybe I should?” A horrifying thought slithers into her mind. “Do I need to check on the kids? Are they okay?”

He’s off the porch and reaching for her before she can react. Laura tries to pull away, but his hands are on her arms, holding her in place. “Who said that?” His fingers flex against her skin, but it’s his eyes that terrify her – no longer careful, they’re now fierce and demanding. “Laura, who was here?”

“Get your fucking hands off me,” she growls, pulling free of him with a jerk. He starts towards her again, but pulls up abruptly, those same hands raised in clear and unmistakable surrender.

“I’m sorry.” He ducks his head for a brief moment, then looks at her again – his eyes softer, more…him. “Loki was here? Laura please – what happened? Did he see the kids?”

She wants to hate him, wants to hurt him for making her feel this way, but the fear in his eyes is suddenly so real that she can’t help but shake her head. “No. Coop was at soccer practice. Lila was playing over at the Jallos’ place. He just…appeared…in the kitchen.”

His body twitches as instinct moves him towards her again, but her husband is not a stupid man. He gives her the space she needs in order to hold on. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “This was never supposed to happen. None of this was ever supposed to happen.”

“I still don’t know what’s happening!” She hugs her arms across her chest, feeling suddenly much colder than she can blame on the night air. “None of this makes any sense, Clint.”

“I know,” he says, his expression suddenly earnest. “I know, and I’m sorry. Please. Tell me what you want me to do.” The implication that he expects her to order him out of the house hangs in the space between them.

Their eyes meet, and even in the dim light the weight of their years and depth of their commitment to each other reaches down through her fear and uncertainty. “Just talk to me,” she says finally, the words more grief than words. “Not Fury, not Natasha, not Coulson – just you.”

She’s said something wrong – his expression betrays him. “What is it?”

His inhale is slow and suddenly loud in the stillness. “Coulson…Phil…he died. Loki killed him. I didn’t even know until everything was done.”

Emotion swells inside Laura, and before she makes a conscious decision to move, the distance between them has vanished, and her hands are on his arms now – offering whatever comfort he might be willing to take. Phil Coulson was one of the few who knew their secret. He was an interesting blend of contrasts: soft-spoken, domestic, and possessed of one of the driest wits Laura had ever known. He had taught her how to make risotto that even the kids enjoyed.

In the field, Clint and Natasha’s handler was something very different – brilliant, strategic, skilled in all manners of weaponry and combat and fiercely protective of his charges. In Clint’s own words, he was a “total badass”, and Clint admired him more than any other man Laura had ever heard him talk about.

“I should have been there,” Clint whispers, moving into her at last. She doesn’t resist as he puts his arms around her, pulls her against his chest. “I should have…I was…” A sob escapes him at last; Laura barely has time to get her arms around him before the tears he should have cried long before this escape his iron control. He shudders in her arms, his sobs becoming deeper and more broken as his grief finally gets the best of him.

“It’s okay,” she murmurs at last. “You’re all right, Clint. You’re here. It’s okay.” She repeats the words over and over, the only indication he hears her the way that his hands clutch at her shoulders. _”The fact that there was even one is a cancer he may likely never recover from.”_

“No,” she whispers, pulling him in even tighter, fingers threading in his short, spiky hair. “Whatever this is, it can’t have you Clint. We were here first.”

“I didn’t know what to do.” The horrible, gut-wrenching sobs have almost died away, but she senses that this is all far from over. “I shouldn’t have come home. I know that, but I didn’t know where else to go.” Dark thoughts are behind the statement – as clear as if he’d said them allowed, and Laura knows that if she does the right thing…the smart thing…and turns him out now, they will never see him alive again.

Tightening her hold on him, she tugs his head up. “You listen to me, Clint Barton. This is your home. Nothing you’ve done or will do is going to change that.” There is so much grief and pain in his storm-colored eyes that for one horrible moment she wants to die. The thought that she might not be strong enough to support him and be there for the children crosses her mind, but she just as quickly pushes it out again. 

Failure is not an option.

“I can’t put you at risk, Laura. You don’t understand – it would kill me if something happened to you or the kids.” He’s looking at her for permission to stay, she realizes. Some indication that she can still trust him in ways he no longer can trust himself.

She wants to be strong for him, cavalier and confident like some love interest in one of the cheesy action flicks they watch every date night. Awareness that those kinds of heroines rarely have children to consider is enough to hold her in check. “Hold onto that fear,” she says finally. “We’ll start with that. It’ll be slow going, but this is not a fight I am willing to lose.”


End file.
